Leveraging intellectual property acquired from Soapstone Networks, Extreme Networks introduced new service engineering capabilities that push the boundaries of what is possible with point-and-click provisioning systems.
The company's new Ridgeline Service Advisor management software aims to advance a carrier's service support from simple, reactive circuit monitoring to a more proactive service management approach. The goal is to accelerate the provisioning of new services, enhance subscriber experience through visual service monitoring, and increase network efficiency by simplifying service engineering.
The management capabilities in Ridgeline Service Advisor, which will be extended across Extreme's portfolio of Summit series and BlackDiamond series Ethernet Transport switches, provide a graphical representation of the network coupled with point-and-click provisioning. Ridgeline Service Advisor automates service provisioning by replacing the command line interface commonly used for provisioning services and replacing it with visual software that automatically translates menu-based commands and mouse-clicks to switch specific instructions for multiple network switches at the same time. This capability ensures that services such as residential triple play aggregation, MEF Certified Business Ethernet services, Ethernet mobile backhaul, and wholesale services can be provisioned faster and more accurately.
In addition, Ridgeline Service Advisor provides visual service monitoring that displays service status and the active path of the service through the unified graphical interface. Currently, such path information usual resides in a series of configuration files on discrete switches. Ridgeline Service Advisor also automates the provisioning of Ethernet Automatic Protection Switching (EAPS) for resilient Ethernet rings by providing point-and-click provisioning of resilient EAPS domains.
"Service providers understand that advanced service management software is a powerful way to help monetize their network and differentiation their offering," said Mark Showalter, senior director of service provider marketing and business development at Extreme Networks. "We are delighted to add Ridgeline Service Advisor to our portfolio of high-performance Ethernet Transport products that help carriers increase the longevity of their network, increase subscriber loyalty, and lower the long term cost of operating next-generation broadband networks."
Extreme Networks Ridgeline Service Advisor has a targeted release of the third quarter 2010 with a beginning list US price of $19,995 for 20 nodes.
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- In August 2009, Extreme Networks acquired the software assets of Soapstone Networks. The transaction transferred ownership of the Soapstone Networks software control plane and service aware provisioning system, enabling Extreme Networks to simplify the service provider's job of provisioning and maintaining Ethernet services for their subscribers.
